YouTube and Choir – Setting the text visually

April 14, 2011 by philip copeland Leave a Comment

Barber’s setting of “The Coolin'” is on my mind this morning – it is a text and setting that continues to haunt me:

Come with me, under my coat,

and we will drink our fill of the milk of the white goat,

or wine if it be thy will.

And we will talk, until talk is a trouble, too,

out on the side of the hill;

And nothing is left to do, but an eye to look into an eye,

and a hand in a hand to slip; and a sigh to answer a sigh;

And a lip to find out a lip! What if the night be black!

And the air on the mountain chill! Where all but the fern is still!

Stay with me, under my coat!

and we will drink our fill of the milk of the white goat,

out on the side of the hill!

Although I’m not crazy about the following performance, I like the way they did the YouTube video – it might be a wonderful model for us all:

Comments

John Pearson says

April 16, 2011 at 3:13 pm

Here’s an example of the annotation method:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvhm4YUZwlQ

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John Pearson says

April 16, 2011 at 10:31 am

Yes, a very good model to enhance the experience. Note that the text was “burned into” the video prior to the upload to youtube. There are two other methods that youtube provides that could achieve a similar result but which would not require as much video editing know-how.

Subtitle Method:

If the text is English, they can “line up” the text with the video automatically, so you just need to upload the text after you’ve uploaded the video. If the text is not English, then you need to upload a file that contains the text plus the time points that the text should be introduced. In this subtitle approach, the text does not overlay and obscure the video, but you only see one line of text at a time, which may not provide enough time or enable the listener to see an entire stanza as the “overlay” method does. See more about youtube captions here.

Annotation Method:

This method enables you to overlay entire stanzas, either directly over the video, or in “pop ups” when the listener “mouses over” a “hot-spot”. You can also add hot-spots to jump to other videos or to websites for more information. See more about this method here.

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